One way to argue for the US over the PRC, as Australia’s foreign ministry has, is to cite the larger stock of American investment in Australia as trumping Sino-Australian annual trade volume (which is much larger than US-Australian volumes). Armstrong is quite right to dismiss this. A trade dollar is not comparable to an investment dollar and merging them in one overarching ‘relationship’ figure does not make sense.
The stock of investment accumulates over time while trade is reset annually. If only annual transactions are compared, trade is much larger and swamps investment. More important, individual trade transactions are one-time while investment transactions constitute a continuing relationship. Hence trade and investment are separated into the current account and capital account, respectively, in the balance of payments.
There is also a practical reason not to stress American investment as crucial in determining the most important partner: American investment in Australia may not always outstrip Chinese.
American outward investment around the globe ebbs and flows, soaring in 2011 but slipping in 2012 and 2013. To this point, Chinese global investment, while it remains far smaller than American investment, has steadily increased. Further, Australia is more important to the PRC as an investment partner than Australia is to the US. So investment in Oz may not always be a bastion of American pre-eminence.
Meanwhile, Australian goods and services trade with China was more than twice as large as with the US in 2012–13. Perhaps more important, Chinese demand for Australian goods surged as the global recession hit in 2008 and accelerated through 2010. While other countries struggled with government borrowing and loose money as policy responses, Australia enjoyed very effective stimulus, courtesy of the PRC.
Oddly, though, it is trade that illustrates flaws in deeming China as number one. Growth in Australian exports to China has slowed considerably since 2010. While understandable, this is also set to continue. It may even be that exports will contract.
Iron ore, of course, dominates the trade relationship, accounting for about half of total exports and 30 per cent of all trade, including services. And iron ore exports have much more downside risk than upside.
There are two scenarios for Chinese steel production: no growth and outright decline. China has refused to rein in steel for some time. Regardless of whether or not Xi Jinping’s government is different from Hu Jintao’s, though, the industry cannot get bigger. Overcapacity is too extensive, exceeding demand by perhaps one-third.
If the current government in Beijing is actually serious about overcapacity, as it claims, steel is first on the chopping block. The process may have already started in the top provincial producer Hebei. In that case, total iron ore imports are likely to decline, threatening Australian producers.
Chinese urbanisation will not be riding to the rescue, as many commodities producers still hope. The wildly expensive forced urbanisation program bandied about a year ago all but disappeared at last month’s meetings of the National People’s Congress (thankfully). While it will still be discussed, it is highly unlikely to materialise. One reason: the size of China’s debt is prohibitive.
The same story holds for less-important metals such as copper and nickel. Other commodities could emerge as replacements, but Australian competitiveness in supplying China with coal, gas and wheat is unclear. If metals exports are capped indefinitely or shrink, Sino-Australian trade will be sizable but no longer exceptional.
As Armstrong notes, a painful contraction in metals exports would indeed prove China’s current importance to Australia. But that importance will also prove temporary, whether metals contract or just stagnate. Those espousing China as number one may be buying at the peak.
It is true that China being overvalued does not automatically make America undervalued. Australian trade with the US will remain considerably smaller even if China decisively curbs its steel industry. Dollar figures will still cast doubt on the US as top partner.
But dollars don’t reveal the full value of the US economically — something Singapore has not forgotten and Australia should not, either.
China has demonstrated ability to inhibit progress at the WTO, but not to lead it. The US is currently disengaged from the WTO but has certainly led in the past. Despite American missteps, the Trans-Pacific Partnership is an attempt at a deeply liberalising, even transformative agreement. The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership is far less ambitious.
If the global economy is going to be changed for the better, it will be done based on principles established by the US and with indispensable American participation. China is nowhere near this kind of global partner and does not look to be one anytime soon. This is also part of valuing an economic relationship.
The embrace of China as number one that Armstrong and others want should be a short one.
Derek Scissors is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
Derek
You clearly accept the key analytic propositions in my argument and I have no dispute with you there.
It is not a matter of me *wanting* China to be number one, as you suggest, but the simple fact is that China is Australia’s most important economic partner now, a point on which you agree.
A forecasting game on the Chinese economy is not the purpose here but I would caution against thinking of the economic relationship as all about commodities trade, now or in the future. The forecasting game requires a much more sophisticated analysis and understanding of Australia’s role in the regional economy than is given here.
Trade in a large range of goods and services, as the Australian Asian Century White Paper suggests, is set to increase even as the trade in iron ore levels off. Australia will continue to be an important raw materials supplier to China because of its low cost intra-marginal supplies (just as it has continued to be for Japan) and, indeed, as many in the business argue, market share in China is likely to increase rather than decline.
Shiro
Mr Armstrong is correct, but i feel both of you are looking at short term rather than long term implications and should concentrate on more micro data like the difference in personal savings rates.
Chinese consumers have greater potential for growth now than Americans with a steady and stable manufacturing economy whereas while some manufacturing has returned to the US, events like Detroit declaring bankruptcy, more Americans being reliant on food stamps and the general lack of secure employment with a reliance on low income service and retail sector jobs makes America seem less dynamic as a market and source of investment.
This isn’t to discount America’s potential and power, but at the moment China’s potential as a high end consumer market that’ll have greater demands beyond infrastructure and more like those of other first world markets is becoming a real possibility that Australia would be foolish to ignore, it’d be like ignoring Japan’s booms in the 60s and 70s or Taiwan and SKorea booming in the 80s and 90s.